Surprising news last week was the buzz that Nokia is sort of pulling out of the Japanese market for the majority of its products. Care to guess why Nokia conceded the battle on mobile phones in Japan?
Nokia Executive VP Timo Ihamuotil was quoted saying “We have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localised products is no longer sustainable“.
Nokia conquers the global mobile market with about 40% of all handsets in its name but in Japan, Nokia has less than 1% market share. That’s is certainly very small until you learn that only 5% of the mobile phones in Japan are coming from foreign manufacturers. So it’s not just Nokia but every other non-Japanese brand. Just that Nokia was first to call it quits.
Not surprisingly, Nokia will still sell a couple of its high-end phones in Japan — something like the $30,000-a-pop Nokia Vertu.
the unlocked, grey-market nokia e71 that i use in japan has all those features brb mentions — AND it hasn’t had half its features disabled by the japanese carrier. The Japanese carrier i got my previous nokia 6680 from had made it unable to install apps (without a bit of hacking), or to update firmware. i think nokia would have done a lot better in japan if the local carriers hadn’t been actively sabotaging its product line.